Shades
by Dinogeek
Summary: Before he met John, no one had any color at all. After he met John, everyone had a color but him. And after the fall, he finally figured out what color he really was.


**A/N: So yeah, I've got no idea what this is. It's sort of character study, sort of sci-fi, sort of... yeah I got nothing. Whatever it is, I hope you enjoy it though. :D And of course I love hearing what you guys think, because I'm wondering about adding another bit to it, so if you think I should, or if you think I should kill it with fire, please feel free to tell me! And you guys all have an awesome Monday! ^-^**

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Four year old Sherlock Holmes sat at the top of the tree, waiting for the world to tear itself apart. He figured it was bound to happen eventually; the connections were everywhere, and the more prevalent something was, the more likely it was that something would go wrong.

Everything was connected together, like threads in a piece of fabric, but it seemed to him that no one else could see them. How, though? Did they not look, did they really not see them? What, were they covering their eyes? They severed the connections and then were surprised when the fabric unraveled. He watched and he waited from the tree because the tree was above the rest of it and it was safe. At least, he hoped it was; here he could watch them from a distance and not have to feel their pain when they cut the threads.

They were all different colors, all the threads; some were white, some were black, some were red and green and purple and yellow but no two were ever alike. None of them were the same shade, all different nuances of their chosen hue. No two ever ran to the same places either- some went from building to building, some went from people to places. The strangest threads, and the ones that hurt most to watch be severed, were the threads that ran from person to person.

They were the best and the worst to look at. They could be either a wonder or a tragedy, a blessing or a curse. When they broke, the color faded, cracks appearing slowly before spreading further, until finally the thread disintegrated, a thing of beauty worn into nonexistence by the very people it was meant to connect.

But the world never tore itself apart; and finally the four year old came down from the tree. The threads stayed with him throughout his life, and he watched and waited and guarded as many of them from damage as he could. It was his job- to keep the others from breaking the threads, because as more of the threads went, the world got closer and closer to tearing itself apart and he would not let that happen.

None of the people ever had colors before he met John; they were faded, normal, no color at all, not even from the threads that spread out to all sides of them. Dull. And then he met John, and it was like a blast of lightning. John had color, a stark, bright white that almost hurt his eyes to look at. He was, in an instant, the most interesting person Sherlock had ever seen. Still, though, he was the only one; no one else got colors, not even Sherlock himself.

Slowly though, it began to change. When he was with John, he began to see other people's colors, and they were fascinating. Unlike the threads, there were only certain colors people could be: white, red, blue, black. They could be any shade within that, of course, but nothing else. No yellows or greens or browns. Just the four.

He wondered why that was, but finally he realized that it was who they were as people that determined their shade. John, blinding white, was good. He was honest and decent and loyal and strong. Mrs. Hudson, on the other hand, was aquamarine blue- calm and peaceful and loving and caring. And then there was Lestrade, who was burning-fire red. Passionate and energetic and principled and, like white, fiercely loyal to those he cared for.

And then there was Moriarty; pitch-black, like the depths of a chasm. Vicious and cunning and manipulative and treacherous, the opposite of everything the other three were.

Those were the first colors he saw, the four in their unadulterated states, so it surprised him when other people's colors were mixed. Not everyone was all blue or all red or all white or all black, instead most were a mixture of all four. They varied and fluctuated and changed with the days, but overall they remained static, each person having their own individual shade, never the same as anyone else.

Everyone except Sherlock. He couldn't see his color, try as he might. He remained the last one to be colorless, as though he didn't even know himself. Which one of the four was he? If he had to guess, he wouldn't be blue. Serenity wasn't really his way, and he didn't think that red was going to suit him, so it was down to the other two. Sometimes it worried him, whether he would be black or white. His fear of the answer was keeping him back, because he didn't know what he'd do if his color was black. As long as he worried, he wouldn't be able to see.

He had never told anyone else about the colors, not ever. It was a gift he kept to himself, because he knew that no one else would believe him if he tried to explain. So he watched the colors change in the world, watched the threads grow and die and be reborn, all the while wondering about himself.

And then came the fall. He had seen it coming long before it really began, with the darkness spreading all around, blackened threads reaching out further and further and he did what he could to stop them but it wasn't enough. It couldn't be enough. Moriarty's web stretched onward, even reaching the threads of those around him, tainting them with his mark.

And they listened. They let the darkness deceive them and take over their true colors until he was surrounded by the blackness. Except for John; John never changed, not once, still staying as brilliantly brightly white as he had been since Sherlock first laid eyes on him. And it hurt to lie to him, God it hurt, but Sherlock had no choice. He had to keep him safe. As he stood on that roof, working up his courage to go over the edge, he lied. He told John to tell the world that he'd made it all up, that he was a fake and a fraud and a criminal and he figured that, when he woke up from the fall, he'd know for sure who he was. He would be black, like Moriarty, whose color was slowly fading as he lay dead on the roof behind Sherlock.

As he spoke to John before the fall, John's color tinged with a purplish mix of red and blue, a faint hint around the edges. The thread between them changed too, growing muddied where it had previously been clean.

"Goodbye, John."

After he said those words, he fell, and all around him the colors blurred and the threads tangled and the world began to tear itself apart, just as he'd always feared it would. John's color flashed with red and blue and white and something Sherlock couldn't put his finger on, a combination of all three that was painful to look at. As he had predicted, he lost consciousness, but part of him didn't want to wake up. When he woke up he would find out what color he was, and he still didn't want to know the answer.

But he had to; he had to wake up and he had to know the answer because until he knew who he was he couldn't know what he was fighting. When he woke up, he stared straight forward for a while before looking in the mirror. He was alone. The only color he could see would be his. He gathered his courage and looked in the mirror and stared at what he found, the last thing he would have expected.

He was shining white, just like his friend.


End file.
